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Ars Technica has posted their impressions from a hands-on session with Valve's new Steam Controller. The controller notably departs from standard practice of relying on two thumbsticks for precise movement, instead replacing them with concave touchpads. From the article: "When used as a kind of virtual trackball, as most games did with the right pad, it was a revelation. When used as a virtual d-pad, as it was on the left pad, it was an exercise in frustration. Let's focus on the right pad first. There's definitely a learning curve to using this side of the pad properly; years of muscle memory had me trying to use it like an analog stick (minus the stick) at first. It only really began to click when I started swiping my thumb over the pad, as I've seen in previous videos (there was no one on hand to really explain the controller to me, so I was left figuring it out on my own, just like a new Steam Machine owner). When I say it "started to click," I mean that literally. The subtle clicking in your hands as you swipe along the pad is an incredible tactile experience, as if there was an actual weighted ball inside the controller that's rolling in the direction you swipe. And like a trackball slowly losing its inertia, the clicking slows its pace after you lift your thumb off the pad, giving important contextual information for the momentum imparted by your swipe." More write-ups are available about the controller from Gamespot, Gizmodo, and Joystiq.

New submitter Nyder writes "In a move that is sure to bring tears to the eyes of kids everywhere, Connecticut State Senator Toni Harp proposed a bill in January that would ban anyone younger than 18 from playing 'violent point-and-shoot' video games in arcades or other public establishments. 'The bill also called for research into the effects of violent video games on young minds, through a committee called the Violent Video Game Task Force within the Department of Children and Families. The task force would advise the Governor and General assembly on state programs that "may reduce the effects of violent video games on youth behavior," suggesting before the research was done that violent video games have an effect on children's actions.' Hopefully this won't pass; I guess the video game lobby hasn't paid this Senator enough 'funds' for her campaign."

Paul Fernhout writes with a snippet from Joystiq: "Voxel.js is a new open-source project designed to allow anyone to create 3D games that run directly in a browser. Created by Max Ogden and James Halliday, Voxel.js is based on JavaScript and WebGL, and makes it relatively easy to build Minecraft-like games that play in browsers like Chrome." Paul adds a link to this interview with Max Ogden about the creation of Voxel.js in 22 days. The main site is at Voxel.js.

hypnosec writes "Entire cities in the World of Warcraft have been destroyed with no one spared, not even the NPCs. About 13:00 GMT, forums on WOW started getting the first comments from users regarding players and NPCs dying on the Ragnaros-EU realm in Orgrimmar. Users of the online game started reporting that Draenor had a similar sight to offer. Some of the other realms where this was reported include Tarren Mill, and Twisting Nether." Also at Joystiq, and (with more screenshots) at WCCF Tech, which reports that "it appears the damage is most severe in World of Warcraft European servers."

YokimaSun writes "Nintendo has revealed the release date of the Wii U: in Japan it will launch on the 8th December, and in the U.S. it will launch on November 18th. The console will ship in two versions: a basic version with 8GB of internal memory and a Deluxe version that has 32GB of internal memory and comes with a stand and docks. Both versions have 1GB of main memory and as much again for game memory. Nintendo claims the console is 20 times more powerful than the Wii and supports 1080p visuals out the box. It comes with an HDMI cable. All existing Wii accessories will work with the Wii U, but the new Tablet Gamepad will set you back around £100/$173 when you convert yen over. The price of the Deluxe SKU is $350." Here's a list of launch titles.

New submitter junkrig writes "After a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, Jordan Weisman, creator of Shadowrun, has returned to bring the series back to the screen as Shadowrun Returns; an old-school, turn-based tactical RPG. Their successful initial fundraising (over $1.8 million) allowed them to commit to developing a native Linux version of the game. A second team, working closely with Weisman, now hopes to bring a similar, turn-based Shadowrun game to life: Shadowrun Online. To be built with the Unity 4 engine, Shadowrun Online will be massively multiplayer and have native Linux support from the start — assuming, of course, they manage to fund their project. Both games are expected for release in 2013."

New submitter junkrig writes "After a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, Jordan Weisman, creator of Shadowrun, has returned to bring the series back to the screen as Shadowrun Returns; an old-school, turn-based tactical RPG. Their successful initial fundraising (over $1.8 million) allowed them to commit to developing a native Linux version of the game. A second team, working closely with Weisman, now hopes to bring a similar, turn-based Shadowrun game to life: Shadowrun Online. To be built with the Unity 4 engine, Shadowrun Online will be massively multiplayer and have native Linux support from the start — assuming, of course, they manage to fund their project. Both games are expected for release in 2013."

An anonymous reader writes "Activision, along with developer Terminal Reality, is turning The Walking Dead into a first-person shooter. For those of you who aren't familiar, The Walking Dead is a story about a group of people who are trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. It began as a comic book series, and was adapted into a successful television show by AMC. Now, apparently Activision feels the world needs another zombie shooter, and thinks The Walking Dead is the perfect backdrop. The game will 'revolve around Daryl Dixon and his brother Merle on a "haunting, unforgiving quest to make their way to the supposed safety of Atlanta." Players will control Daryl as they attempt to avoid detection from zombies that hunt using sight, sound and smell and will choose between fighting them or using stealth to avoid detection.' A video game adaptation of the story already exists as an episodic adventure game."

redletterdave writes "On Thursday, former Boston Red Sox pitcher and tech entrepreneur Curt Schilling fired his entire staff at 38 Studios, his Rhode Island-based video game company, leaving more than 300 employees without jobs because the company couldn't repay its debt to the state. 38 Studios failed to pay Rhode Island's economic development agency $1.1 million, which was due last week, and also failed to meet payroll for its staff in both its Providence office and its Maryland subsidiary, Big Huge Games." The company's recent action RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, sold 1.2 million copies — which would have been great if they hadn't needed to sell 3 million to break even. An article at Massively goes through some of the lessons the video game industry needs to learn from this situation.

eldavojohn writes "According to Lead designer Stone Librande, it has been confirmed that the next installment of SimCity will require a constant internet connection. Perhaps as a form of DRM, the 2013 edition looks like it will be the first to include online play but will also require you to constantly be connected to Origin to play — even if that wasn't your point of purchase. Add SimCity to the growing list." Update: 03/29 02:09 GMT by S : An online connection will be needed to start the game, but you won't be kicked out if your connection dies.

_xeno_ writes "It's taken a year since Final Fantasy XIV launched to what can at best be called unfavorable reviews, but Square Enix CEO Yoichi Wada is finally willing to admit that the (still subscription-free) MMO 'greatly damaged' the entire Final Fantasy brand. Despite this damage, Wada said Square Enix will continue to work on 'reviving' the game, with an upcoming patch promising to finally introduce such series staples as chocobos and airships. Even so, there's still no word on the PS3 release, which was delayed until the game was 'fixed,' nor is there any sign that Square Enix feels the game will be worth a subscription fee any time soon."

BioWare announced today that their upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, will launch on December 20 in North America, and December 22 in Europe. They've released a new trailer for the game, and reiterated that they'll be throttling logins early on to prevent server instability. Gamasutra recently spoke with SW:TOR project lead James Ohlen about finishing up the game and preparing it for launch. He said, "We're also focused on game balance for combat, for itemization, for the social systems. We've been running a lot of tests, we're getting a lot of feedback on the game. And when we get that feedback, we use it to make tweaks and changes. We're not making major changes now, we're just making changes that we can."

New submitter rescendent writes "In an interview with Massively, Illyriad Games developers Ben Adams and James Niesewand predict the death of Flash, the rise of HTML5, and a long-term shift away from installed games. Quoting: 'The major advantages that boxed set or download games have had over browser-based games are local storage and direct access to the graphics and audio engines. Those barriers are being smashed apart by HTML5. ... Especially for MMO game developers, I personally don't believe that developers have any real long-term choice about embarking on this path or not. Ultimately, I believe it's either browser-based or obsolescence. If you don't do it, your competitors will, and they'll be making games that work identically on more device platforms, on more browsers, on more operating systems. It's going to take a very long time to get there, though, but this change has begun now, and we firmly believe that HTML5 is the future.' With Microsoft joining the ranks of Apple and not supporting Flash in Windows 8, there's definitely a risk to Flash. But will browser-based games really replace installed games?"

mlauzon writes "It seems a lot of companies are seeing the light and turning their subscription based games into the F2P model, or 'freemium,' as it's now being called. Quoting Massively: "For those of us who lack Batman's financial resources, maintaining several monthly MMO subscriptions can be a challenge. Sony Online Entertainment recognizes this, and as a result, the company has just announced that DC Universe Online will be officially joining the freemium revolution toward the end of October."

An anonymous reader writes "18 years after its debut, Doom, the game that almost single-handedly popularized the FPS genre (remember when we just called them Doom clones?) is finally seeing the light of legality in the nation of Germany. The lifting of the ban also applies to the beloved sequel Doom II. A release date has yet to be set. I recommend that Germans who have not found some way to play this game over the last 18 years, please do so upon its release. Despite its age, it's still fun as hell. (Pun very much intended.)"

An anonymous reader writes "GameFly apparently wants to follow in the footsteps of Netflix, announcing plans to launch a new online client that allows users to download and install their rentals over the internet. The service won't require a separate subscription, but will be bundled alongside a standard GameFly by-mail subscription. GameFly acquired digital game retailer Direct2Drive earlier this year, so it's likely they are harnessing this technology to offer the new service."

Several readers have written with news of a controversy that's been slowly building in space-based MMO EVE Online. "It all began with the Incarna update, which added an item shop to the long-running sci-fi sandbox. Players began to voice their concerns over the bizarrely high prices of items in the shop, with one particular item reaching an insane $68 US. Before this hullabaloo had the chance to so much as come to a simmer, an internal newsletter from CCP was leaked to the internet. The document outlined the introduction of microtransactions into EVE and mentioned that at some point, ships, ammunition, and so forth may be available for purchase with real-world currency. This naturally sent players into even more of a frenzy." Reader Ogre332 points out additional coverage, but notes that many publications are missing the punchline: "Players are angry that CCP has blatantly lied about their intentions and have responded to these customers concerns by basically telling us they know what we want better than we do. The purported e-mail from CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson was like gas on a fire, and a response to some concerns in the form of a dev blog was not well received at all. Players are protesting, and many claim to be canceling their accounts left and right."

Several readers have written with news of a controversy that's been slowly building in space-based MMO EVE Online. "It all began with the Incarna update, which added an item shop to the long-running sci-fi sandbox. Players began to voice their concerns over the bizarrely high prices of items in the shop, with one particular item reaching an insane $68 US. Before this hullabaloo had the chance to so much as come to a simmer, an internal newsletter from CCP was leaked to the internet. The document outlined the introduction of microtransactions into EVE and mentioned that at some point, ships, ammunition, and so forth may be available for purchase with real-world currency. This naturally sent players into even more of a frenzy." Reader Ogre332 points out additional coverage, but notes that many publications are missing the punchline: "Players are angry that CCP has blatantly lied about their intentions and have responded to these customers concerns by basically telling us they know what we want better than we do. The purported e-mail from CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson was like gas on a fire, and a response to some concerns in the form of a dev blog was not well received at all. Players are protesting, and many claim to be canceling their accounts left and right."

KingSkippus writes "The superhero-themed MMORPG City of Heroes announced this morning that it is rebranding the game as City of Heroes Freedom ('freedom to pay and play as you choose'), and moving to a hybrid payment model including a free-to-play option. 'VIP' players who still pay a monthly subscription will have most features of the game unlocked and will be given credit towards purchase of others. City of Heroes Freedom is due to land later this year with the next major game update." The trend toward free-to-play continues. Meanwhile, a recent update that brought microtransactions to EVE Online has (at least temporarily) resulted in digital clothing items becoming more expensive than real-world counterparts.

In 2008 we discussed news of an MMO in an early phase of development that sought to merge two different forms of media: TV shows and video games. Now, reader querbeet points out that work on the game — Defiance — is much further along. Screenshots and an interview with a senior developer provide a clearer image of how such a project will work. "Both the game and the show take place in a near future, post-apocalyptic version of Earth. ... The game is centered in the remains of San Francisco, while the show will take place in St. Louis. 'They exist within the same universe,' Hill told Ars. 'And primarily where we're going to be different is the fact that things that happen in the game will occur in the show and things that happen in the show will occur in the game. From a global standpoint this could be a large political change, a big environmental change, and they'll happen simultaneously on both.' As an example, Hill said that a character from the show could leave for San Francisco, show up in the game and go on adventures with players, before returning to St. Louis to discuss everything that happened while they were in the game world."

Electronic Arts used their E3 press conference to show off a number of upcoming games and provide release dates for a few of them. BioWare's Mass Effect 3 is due out March 6th, 2012, at which time Commander Shepherd will return to defend earth from the Reapers. Battlefield 3 is closer to launch, currently planned for October 26th, with a beta in September. Some new video clips of the game are available. Star Wars: The Old Republic got impressive new trailers, but not many hard details (though they did talk about raiding not long ago). Gamespot's liveblog of the event has more information about the various presentations, including snippets on Need for Speed: The Run, FIFA 12, The Sims Social for Facebook, and Curt Shilling's Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, which is planned for next year.

NCSoft announced yesterday that they plan to shut down all North American servers for their long-running Lineage MMORPG on June 29th. The game came out in 1998 and gradually became one of the most successful MMOs of all time, reporting over a million subscribers as much as a decade after launch. Account creation on North American servers has been disabled, subscriptions for coming months have been refunded, and existing accounts have been reactivated for free. "We will not be making any additional content updates, but we do have US Ruleset changes and lots of great events planned for the next two months. We want to give you every opportunity to make all of your remaining Lineage dreams come true. We hope that everyone will stick around to have fun with the game you love in the time we have left. We know that we have incredibly loyal fans that have stood by us for the past ten years. As painful as it was, as a business, we had to make a very difficult, but necessary, decision."

Indie action-adventure game Magicka has been an unqualified success since its launch in January. While work is still underway on the original game, the CEO of publisher Paradox told Joystiq that a sequel is not in doubt: "When we — and I'm not saying 'if' — but 'when' we are doing a sequel to this game, it's going to be done on a totally different technology. It was super buggy at release. We addressed most of them in the first week, but there are still issues with laptops and a few other things. It's due to the engine that we produced the game on." He also indicated that console ports of Magicka are a strong possibility.

An anonymous reader writes with an update to yesterday morning's news that Sony Online Entertainment's game service was taken offline to investigate a potential data breach related to the PSN intrusion. SOE has now said that they too suffered a major theft of user data. "... personal information from approximately 24.6 million SOE accounts may have been stolen, as well as certain information from an outdated database from 2007. The information from the outdated database that may have been stolen includes approximately 12,700 non-US credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes), and about 10,700 direct debit records of certain customers in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Spain."

motang writes "Nintendo has officially announced the successor to the Wii. At its investors meeting, Nintendo said they have decided to launch the successor to the Wii in 2012 after the fiscal year, and will show it off and have a playable version at this year's E3."

Daetrin writes "It was announced Thursday that Stardock has sold Impulse, the digital game store, to GameStop. Stardock founder Brad Wardell gave an interview to Joystiq talking about the sale and the reasons behind it. GameStop also announced their acquisition of SpawnLabs, a game streaming company. It seems that GameStop is looking to challenge Steam, or at least avoid being cut out of the digital distribution business entirely."

donniebaseball23 writes "id co-founder and all-around programming genius John Carmack, who has become a bigger fan of the iPhone and iOS platform recently, has given his take on the technical aspects of Sony's Next Generation Portable. He says that 'the Sony NGP [will] perform about a generation beyond smart phones with comparable specs.' Essentially, the fast approaching round of iOS and Android devices will still be well behind the capabilities of Sony's new handheld, which comes close to reproducing PS3-like visuals." New details have emerged since the NGP's confirmation yesterday: there will be different versions of the device, all of which can connect over Wi-Fi, but only one of which has 3G connectivity. The battery life will be similar to the original PSP, and the NGP will have two proprietary memory card slots. Sony says they considered 3D for the device, but they don't see how it translates to portable gaming. 1up has a hands-on with the NGP, as well as video of Epic's Unreal Engine 3 tech demo.

itwbennett writes "Last week Google took a page from Apple's book and pulled the Arcade by Kongregate app from the Android Market for violating its terms of service. In particular, the part that forbids distributing 'any Product whose primary purpose is to facilitate the distribution of Products outside of the Market.' As Kongregate's Jim Greer explained to Joystiq, the app is essentially a custom web browser that loads in a Flash game from the mobile version of Kongregate. Plus, it will cache the game so you can play offline. And this may be the feature that got it yanked, speculates Ryan Kim at GigaOm."

Capcom's recent release of action platformer Maxsplosion for the iPhone caused indie developer Twisted Pixel to call Capcom out for copying the concept from their successful Xbox Live game 'Splosion Man. Twisted Pixel said they had no plans for legal action, since they were "too small to take on a company like Capcom." The indie studio had even pitched the game to Capcom for publishing at one point, but were declined. Now, Capcom has released a statement denying that Maxsplosion's development team had any knowledge of the meetings and saying, "MaXplosion was developed independently by Capcom Mobile. Nonetheless, we are saddened by this situation and hope to rebuild the trust of our fans and friends in the gaming community."

Sony Online Entertainment has announced that their long-awaited superhero MMO DC Universe Online will be launching on January 11th in the US and January 14th in the UK. The game will be available for Windows and the PlayStation 3. Massively recently wrote up their impressions from the beta test, and a preview at The Escapist said this of the combat: "Based on my early experiences, the action of DCUO is a lot of fun. You can lock onto targets, but there is no auto attack button. To take down enemies, you must click a button to punch or fire a ranged attack. The brawler-style action feels like a wham-bang comic book. Scenery is not just difficult terrain; picking up barrels and tossing them at your foes is sometimes necessary for tough encounters. Leveling up your skills unlocks combos, with varying effects that can interrupt enemies from pulling off that devastating fire breath or stunning punch. ... The only downside with such frenetic combat is that the keyboard and mouse interface isn't really conducive to all this action. It's hard to follow up nine short left clicks with a long right button click. While I was visiting SOE's offices, I was able to play with a PS3 controller, and this control scheme was preferable."

Today a remake of the Dreamcast classic Crazy Taxi launched on the PlayStation Network, with the Xbox Live Arcade release coming November 24th. The graphics have been updated to 720p, but licensing issues for the soundtrack and some in-game locations resulted in noticeable changes. Quoting the Opposable Thumbs blog: "The Offspring, along with Bad Religion, provided the game's soundtrack in the original release. These songs, along with the sound of that announcer, went a long way toward creating the game's mood. In the new version, they have been replaced by completely forgettable pop-punk tracks, and it's a downgrade. ... That's not the only thing that's missing. The game originally featured licensed locations. Customers would need to be dropped off at the Pizza Hut, for instance. These companies didn't spring for the advertising in the game's rerelease, but the buildings weren't updated to look like anything else; the result is a game that looks like its filled with closed-down fast food restaurants. ... this is an interesting look at what went on to become a cult classic. Still, this is no replacement for my original copy."

UgLyPuNk writes "After many, many delays, Gran Turismo 5 has finally gotten a solid release date: November 24th. ('Tis the season for vaporware titles to emerge into the real world, it seems.)" Eurogamer posted a preview of the game back in August, saying, "It's been a whirlwind of features and car chatter, beneath which the game still looks fantastic. It may have been in development for the whole of this console generation, but the technical arms race has slowed down and GT5 still looks as good as any other racing game we've seen, and it is, to say the least, comprehensive." Joystiq has a video of the course maker and a collection of screenshots.

UgLyPuNk writes "After many, many delays, Gran Turismo 5 has finally gotten a solid release date: November 24th. ('Tis the season for vaporware titles to emerge into the real world, it seems.)" Eurogamer posted a preview of the game back in August, saying, "It's been a whirlwind of features and car chatter, beneath which the game still looks fantastic. It may have been in development for the whole of this console generation, but the technical arms race has slowed down and GT5 still looks as good as any other racing game we've seen, and it is, to say the least, comprehensive." Joystiq has a video of the course maker and a collection of screenshots.

As World of Warcraft prepares for the launch of its third expansion, Cataclysm, on December 7th, the design team is busily trying to finish all the new high level content, the destruction and rebuilding of Azeroth, and major changes to many of the game's systems and classes. At Blizzcon we spoke with Greg Street (a.k.a. Ghostcrawler), Lead Systems Designer for WoW, about Blizzard's goals for this expansion, the problems they're trying to solve, reasoning for the creation of a few new features, and why they aren't willing to simply throw more people at complicated projects. Read on for our discussion about World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

Slashdot: With the previous expansions, it seems like one of the goals has been to make things more inclusive for raiders. Do think you've reached the end of the road in that regard? Are there still goals for the future?

Greg Street: We've got a lot of players into raiding now. I don't encounter too many players these days who say, "I want to raid but I'm not sure how," or "It's too hard." Particularly, the raids underneath Wintergrasp and soon Tol'Barad are super-easy for any group to just pick up and go do quickly. So I think we're doing a good job of being inclusive there. I think we need to, perhaps, pay a little more attention to the super-hardcore guys who felt a little neglected at times in Wrath of the Lich King.

Slashdot: These days the design team is working on solving social and psychological problems perhaps more than technical problems. What types of those are you working on now?

Greg Street: Something that has come up a lot is that cross-server battlegrounds and then the dungeon finder going cross server has eroded the sense of community within a server. It used to be, "I knew these guys," or "He was the best mage on the server," or things like that. It's much harder to identify that now. And another thing is the ability to hop from server to server so easily now. One of the things we're doing to work against that, a little bit — Tol'Barad will be like Wintergrasp, in that it's just your server, so hopefully you can get to know people a little better there. And then the big push we're making for guilds in Cataclysm. You're going to have achievements, and [you'll be able to] level your guild. It's something you can work together with your closest friends to try to accomplish.

Slashdot: Do you think that will supplement the permanence of guilds, making it easier for people to keep their guilds going?

Greg Street: I think the guild itself will mean something, and people will be reluctant to give up a guild they worked really hard on. I mean, it won't be impossible — we're not trying to fetter people too much.

Slashdot: For Cataclysm you're increasing health pools significantly, not to mention all the other numbers. Is mudflation becoming an issue for you?

Greg Street: We're pretty confident that the curve we have overall can keep going almost indefinitely. The numbers are solid in most cases. We used to have a problem where, say, critical strike rating can't go up any higher, because it's at 60 or 70 percent. The way combat ratings work now, I don't think we're in danger of the combat systems collapsing on themselves because of the numbers. I think we are at risk for them becoming hard to manage. Once players are saying, "I have 17,000,000 health," and everything just has so many zeroes on it, at that point we'll have to do something. I don't know if it's just lopping three zeroes off of everything, or what. I think the human brain loses the ability to parse numbers once they get beyond a certain size.

Slashdot: For heroic dungeons, are you trying to copy what you did in Wrath of the Lich King? How are those evolving?

Greg Street: I think the heroic dungeons will feel a little more like Burning Crusade. Hopefully it will be the best of Lich King and Burning Crusade. Part of what people remember about the Burning Crusade heroic dungeons was the "17 pulls of trash in between bosses," or something like that. Hopefully we can get through that a little quicker, but still have the bosses as a challenge, something players have to learn. We think that the encounters are a failure if players can go through a boss fight, and then when we ask them, "What was that boss doing? What was special that you had to do in that fight," and they say, "Well I didn't notice anything." Then we know that they're just overpowering it instead of having to learn the encounter.

Slashdot: You mentioned in the panel on Friday that a lot of that information — boss abilities, loot lists — are going to be integrated into the game. Where do you draw the line at what's OK to have in the game and what players can be expected to go on a website and look up?

Greg Street: I think the game needs to provide players the information they need to play the game. It's fine if they are trying to improve their damage-per-second (DPS) by one extra percent by visiting a fan site or a news site. It's very frustrating with boss abilities, to use that particular example... we've all been in dungeons where the leader says something like, "He's going to do some kind of fire thing, I think it's called.. Flame..something? I don't remember, but you'll recognize it when you see it." And everybody else asks, "What?"

I think in that example, the game is just hiding information from players that they need to function. Now, you can definitely take that too far. We could get to the point where there are mods that say, "Stand here! OK, now press this button. Now stand over here." And at some point, they're playing Dragon's Lair, or something, instead of having to do a real boss encounter.

Slashdot: Speaking of mods, Cataclysm is introducing some welcome changes to the UI. How do you decide what players need to look at and what you want to integrate with the base UI?

Greg Street: That's really tough, because we want World of Warcraft to be moddable, and we support the community — both the developers who make those mods and the players who use them. We try to look at when the players are saying something is essential. We made a system to manage gear because players were telling us, "I can't play without this mod, now. This mod is so important that you guys just need to offer this functionality." We did the same thing with the big raid frames. Too many players were telling us, "Your raid frames are just not at all functional. No reasonable person is going to do a World of Warcraft raid with the standard raid frames. We won't replace everything. The QuestHelper brand of mods are something else we looked at and said, "We just need to do more here. Clearly, players are asking for it."

Slashdot: Are there any UI elements that are on your radar right now, that you're thinking about revamping?

Greg Street: I think we could do a lot more with the Auction House UI. I think our mobile and cell phone Auction House is probably superior to our in-game version at this point. And there are some mods that have done a great job -- we don't want to automate that whole experience too much, but providing the information and storing it, I think we could do better at. We'd love, someday, to do a better version of Recount, or some of the damage meters. Now, when I say better — our version sucks, which is just the combat log you have to somehow have to keep track of. Players really like to know: "What was my DPS? What could I do better this time? What were my sources of damage?" We'd love to just build something like that into the game.

Slashdot: Yesterday's Live Raid was very cool. (Blizzard invited a well-known guild to participate in set of custom raid encounters. They spawned groups of bosses that were originally designed to be dealt with on their own and had the guild fight them in groups of four at a time. At the end, the main villain of the new expansion flew in, annihilated the raid, and then began nuking one of the game world's capital cities. Longer description, YouTube video.)

Greg Street: I'm glad it worked. That was scary.

Slashdot: Has there been any discussion on getting those events out to more players?

Greg Street: That would be very cool. They require a lot of overhead and testing. One of the things people in the audience couldn't appreciate was how our encounter designer up there was changing things on the fly. He was herding bosses, in some cases killing them, and respawning things, trying to keep it all working. Obviously we can't have a human running that stuff from behind the scenes. We'd have to make sure it's cool enough. But I love this idea that Orgrimmar is being attacked and you have to defend it.

Slashdot: Azeroth is getting a complete redesign. How long have you wanted to do that?

Greg Street: Oh, forever. A really big moment was when the programmers put in a way for the level designers to make cliffs that look like real cliffs. We did that in Howling Fjord, [a starting zone in Wrath of the Lich King]. And that was huge. Up until them, all the cliffs looked like — they would call it a scoop of mashed potatoes. It's kind of this rounded blob that doesn't exist in nature. So once they could make these very sheer cliffs, they said, "OK, we've got to go fix everything, now!" Because we couldn't do this before.

Enough things like that had piled up. Originally, for Cataclysm, we thought of hitting five or six zones that were either never very good — like, say, Hinterlands — or just hadn't stood the test of time well and needed some updating. But by the time we were done, it was hard to make Darkshore look awesome, but leave Felwood looking crappy. So we ended up just doing everything.

Slashdot: That seems like a lot of work.

Greg Street: It was a stupid amount of work.

Slashdot: Compared to the last two expansions, it seems like Cataclysm contains an expansion of similar size, plus all of that revamped content.

Greg Street: That's totally true. Probably, if we had more business sense, we'd have broken it into two expansions.

Slashdot: One of the Diablo 3 team's big reveals was the PvP Battle Arenas, which are clearly similar to World of Warcraft's PvP arenas. Are we going to see more integration for the WoW arenas with Battle.net?

Greg Street: We'll have to see. The big focus for Cataclysm, as far as PvP goes, is the rated battleground system. I think too much attention had turned to arenas, and it was defining PvP for a while. For a lot of people, Warcraft was about the war; it was about the Horde or the Alliance fighting over resources, not three gnomes chasing each other around an arena. We're still supporting arenas. We like them, and there's a lot of players that like them too. We'll just have to see how much rated battlegrounds take off. There are a lot of things we can do to improve the e-sports portion of World of Warcraft.

Slashdot: With Wrath of the Lich King, you tended to schedule major content patches several months apart. Do you have a similar plan for Cataclysm?

Greg Street: Yeah. We would like to get patches out as soon as we can, because players are just voracious for content. I think there's a sense that we finished Ulduar too soon. The 3.1 patch, we could have left on a little longer — 3.2 came out a little too quickly. Whereas the final patch, 3.3, has been going on almost a year. That's too long for players to have to deal with the same content over and over. Ideally, we could get patches out every four to six months. Or, eventually we may scale them down to make them smaller but come out more often. It's definitely something we're looking at. We'd love to be able to get faster at doing that.

Slashdot: Some of the quests and dialog in the beta contain content that's a bit edgier than what we normally see in WoW. Will those things make it to live servers. Are you trying to broaden the age groups the game is designed for?

Greg Street: That's one of the fun things — we do it a lot in quest design and then item naming, too — pop culture references here and there. That's something where the Warcraft world doesn't take itself too seriously. There are some really dark, epic moments too, but then there are places we can cut loose a bit. We know players appreciate it, because the remember it and they mention that kind of stuff. You can take it too far, I think. We've had people playing the game for six years, and it's hard to offer them things they haven't seen before. So, in that sense, we do try to be a little edgier.

Slashdot: Are there any systems in Cataclysm that you'd say have improved greatly over Wrath of the Lich King?

Greg Street: Many things. I really like the new end-game point system, both for PvE and PvP. I has the advantages of the Lich King system without being so confusing and having all these vendors, and down-converting badges, and all that. I think we're really happy with the way Glyphs have ended up in Cataclysm. The original promise of Glyphs is closer to what we're able to deliver now. Seeing that awesome new UI, with the list of glyphs that you can just apply whenever you want, we're really happy with that.

Slashdot: One of your goals seems to be separating the fun choices from the math choices in building your character. Are you where you want to be with that, right now?

Greg Street: I would give us a B+ on that. I think we can still do a lot better. We're at the early stages, still, of that revamp. There are some talent decisions in trees that I think are awesome, and there are some other places where it still doesn't feel great. It feels like the obvious choice is to get this one, and this one's the trap. "Don't take this dumb talent over here." There are fewer of those, for sure, but there are still some, and we eventually need to polish all of those, too.

Slashdot: What's the solution to that? Is it adding more talents? Swapping out the bad ones you have?

Greg Street: It's more of the latter, but sometimes a new talent is the answer, too. We just have to really ask: "We thought this was going to be a compelling choice; did it end up as a compelling choice?" "If it didn't, was it because the numbers were wrong, or was it because the encounters we put players into [made it wrong]?" To use a very contrived example: if there's a talent that makes you take less magic damage, and there's not a lot of magic damage being thrown around, that talent's not going to be exciting.

A lot of our survivability talents are based around the premise that healer mana is going to matter a little bit more, so you're going to care a little bit more about trying to keep yourself alive. If everything works out well at the end of a fight, people might post the damage-taken meter, and say, "Dude, this rogue, he took a lot of damage. He was a mana hog for us." If that doesn't happen, then all those utility talents look dumb, because you don't need them, and you could have gotten something else.

Slashdot: Can you talk a bit about why the Path of the Titans system was scrapped?

Greg Street: There are two parts to that. One is that Cataclysm was an unbelievably ambitious project, and we kept adding more and more to it. I mentioned the original glyph version, and at a panel earlier I mentioned the barbershop as feature that were cool, but we could have done a lot more with them. We want to try to limit that in the future. We didn't want to release Paths and then in 5.0 be like, "OK, now we're going to fix the Path system!" We'd rather just do it right the first time.

At the same time, it was tied into a lot of other features, like Archaeology and Glyphs. Those grew a lot on their own. We realized that we were using the promise of Paths to fix up the Glyph system, when what we wanted to do was just make that system actually cool. But we love the idea of some type of end-game progression that isn't item-focused, and I think we'll return to that in the future, sometime when we can get it right.

Slashdot: We're seeing some interesting new mechanics in Cataclysm — for example, the blind dragon, which relies on hearing and makes you moderate the noise your character makes. How much of that is thinking of a fun concept and going from there, versus trying to think of a brand new, innovative concept and trying to make it fun?

Greg Street: We honestly spend a lot of time on innovation. Players are kind of merciless — "Yeah, that was a fun fight, but we've done it before," or, "This is just like that other guy." So we really try to push the envelope there on things players haven't seen before, new systems. We'll have encounter designers say, "I was playing Final Fantasy last night, and it had a boss that did this, and I think we could make that work for a boss in World of Warcraft with these tweaks."

Slashdot: A lot of players, when they hear you talk about how you didn't have time to make a feature good, their question is, "Well, why can't you just go out and hire more people?"

Greg Street: Yeah. The mythical man-month.

Slashdot: Can you explain why you don't find that to be a viable solution?

Greg Street: The other example that gets used a lot is: if it takes a woman nine months to have a baby, then if you have two women, it'd only take four and a half! Our development process is hugely based on iteration and communication. It's more important — for, say, class design and item design — it's more important for me to have a small team that's totally in sync than to have a large team and have no idea what anyone else is working on. We would end up with Hunter talents working one way, the Priest would work a different way, and it wouldn't feel polished. It wouldn't feel good to players. Often, when we say, "We didn't have time," players say, "You shipped it before it was ready." That's not the way we look at it.

The way we look at it is: we are extremely critical of our own designs. We have very long lists of things we want to fix in the game. Some of these things have been around forever, and some of the things are new that we just added recently. If we waited until we addressed every single one of those things, we would never ship anything. It would be years and years before games came out, and that's just not realistic. That's not what players want; they're not going to wait six years for a new expansion. So, instead, we do what we can and we keep other things on the back burner. We've got Paths — this great idea. A dance studio — we're going to do it some day. Just not yet. We're saving it for the right time.

Anyone who watched 'The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters' knows the epic struggle for global Kong dominance waged by Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell. Wiebe took back the crown by scoring 1,064,500-points which was officially verified. And if you haven't seen the movie, go watch it. You won't be sorry.

theodp writes "Patently Apple reports that a new Apple patent application has surfaced describing an application that would record your personal journey through a video game and turn it into a custom comic or iBook when you're done playing. Imagine how thrilled little Billy's Mommy would have been if she only had the chance to read the story of her son's foray into Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas or see how he dealt with BioShock's Little Sisters."

Today Electronic Arts announced Darkspore, an action RPG in development from Maxis that is inspired by Spore's creature creator technology. The game is due to launch in February 2011, and a teaser is available on the official website. A more descriptive video is available from EA's live demo (start at 8:25). Quoting Joystiq: "...Darkspore will let up to three players traverse 'several' planets cooperatively, and while there will be PvP in the finished product, Maxis isn't providing details just yet. The basics will be the same whether going in solo or as a team: You'll be able to choose from a number (again, no specifics yet) of pre-created melee, ranged and support creatures that can have their stats and abilities augmented by equipment. ... When choosing to beam down from your starship to a planet, you will see a lineup of enemy types that you'll encounter. This gives you and your friends enough information to decide which three characters from your collection you'll want to deploy. The trio can then be switched between on the fly, albeit with a brief cool-down period afterward. The idea is to use the characters' various abilities strategically against what the Left 4 Dead-inspired 'AI director' decides to toss your way."

An anonymous reader writes with news that Sony is planning a firmware update for the PS3 to enable 3-D playback from Blu-ray movies and YouTube. The update is scheduled for September, and support for 3-D photos will come later. Sony's Kaz Hirai spoke recently about how the PS3 was designed with these kinds of upgrades in mind. "Given how fast technology turns over now, we knew going in that we had to pack a lot of horsepower into the PS3. Four years ago — when you look at the console's power and its retail price — a lot of people were critical with the fact that there was so much packed under the hood. Now we're especially pleased to be introducing things like Move and 3-D gaming because we're able to show tangibly why we released the PS3 with the power it has, and why it makes so much sense to future proof a console." Sony also updated its PS3 Terms of Service to warn against too much 3-D viewing.

Rock, Paper, Shotgun reports that upcoming action MMOG APB: All Points Bulletin will use in-game audio advertisements as part of its business model. The number of ads you hear will be limited: "you'll only hear an ad when you go into a new zone, and that's only once every three hours." Nevertheless, some gamers are upset that these ads will be included on top of APB's already unusual payment plans. The game is set for release next Tuesday. Producer Jesse Knapp says of Realtime Worlds' goals for APB, "We looked at other online action games, and we saw things we felt could be better. Only 12 to 32 players in a match, bad connection due to peer-to-peer, dead cities, way too much time in lobbies, things like that. So what we set out to do was to make a game that has that online player vs. player action game experience in a large city with other players around, no lobbies, dynamic matchmaking, dedicated servers, great experience, and that's been one of the driving factors of APB from the very beginning." CVG recently previewed the game.

Sony took the stage for the last major keynote of E3 this afternoon, splitting their attention evenly between hardware improvements and new games. First, they talked about 3D technology — Sony plans to try driving 3D adoption in a similar way to what they did with Blu-ray, with 20 titles planned for March 2011 or earlier. Headlining those will be Killzone 3 (coming February 2011), Gran Turismo 5 (coming November 2nd), Tron Evolution, Mortal Kombat, and Crysis 2. Sony also released launch details for their PS Move motion control system. It will be released on September 19th in the US, the motion controller will cost $50, and the navigation controller will cost $30. Several games will get retroactive Move support, such as Resident Evil 5, Heavy Rain, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 11. An RPG called Sorcery was demonstrated; your character has a wand that's very similar to the controller, and you throw arcane bolts or draw walls of fire just as you'd expect. Read on for more about Sony's E3 announcements.

Sony also unveiled a new campaign for the PSP, apparently designed to compete with phone games. Upcoming titles include Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalkers, Invizimals (an augmented reality game that makes use of the camera), God of War: Ghost of Sparta, and Kingdom Hearts. Moving back to the PS3, they gave a presentation on LittleBigPlanet 2, emphasizing how it is a platform for all kinds of games. Users will be able to create almost any type of game within LBP 2 — FPS, RTS, RPG, racing, space shooters, etc. They showed several brief demonstrations created in a short period of time, and it appears to be a very robust set of tools.

Next, Sony announced a long-rumored subscription service for the PlayStation Network called PlayStation Plus. It's intended to provide additional services to gamers for $50 a year. Existing PSN features won't change, and PSPlus will provide access to betas, themes, discounts at the Store, and other services. The crowd wasn't particularly pleased at this, and Sony quickly moved on to upcoming games. Valve's Gabe Newell came out on stage and announced that Portal 2 will be coming to the PS3, apparently with some limited Steam Cloud integration. We also got presentations on Dead Space 2 and a new Twisted Metal game planned for 2011

Nintendo gave a keynote presentation at E3 today, showing off a wealth of upcoming titles for the Wii, the DS, and the 3DS. Shigeru Miyamoto started things off by demonstrating Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword for the Wii, due out next year. While playing it, you hold the Wii Remote and Nunchuck like a sword and shield, and swing naturally at enemies. There's also a bow and arrow, a whip, and a flying bug you can control to go drop bombs on enemies. Nintendo also briefly showed an NBA Jam game, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, and a new set of party games that uses the Wii Remote in unusual ways — for example, multiple players balancing it to disarm a bomb, or seeing which player can be the first to pick up the right controller from the table. Continuing on, they revealed GoldenEye 007, a long-awaited successor to the popular N64 game, due out this holiday season. It will feature split screen play, online multiplayer, and several different game modes. Next, Disney came out with a presentation on their upcoming Epic Mickey game. In it, Mickey can interact with the world using paint and paint-thinner, effectively adding onto or removing objects and characters. In addition to the 3D environment, there is also a part of the game that exists as a sidescrolling platformer, with levels based on classic cartoons. Read on for more about Metroid, Kid Icarus, Metal Gear Solid, and the 3DS.

A major theme for Nintendo's presentation was the arrival of classic franchises on new systems. This includes a new Kirby game for the Wii, entitled Kirby's Epic Yarn. It's a sidescrolling platformer with a new art style based on a yarn theme, and it's due out this fall. In sharp contrast to Kirby's cartoony graphics was Nintendo's next presentation on Metroid: Other M, which had visuals in the same vein as other popular shooters, showing Samus fighting her way through intricate 3D stages to fight some nasty-looking alien monsters. Other M was given a release date of August 31. Just in case that wasn't enough nostalgia for you, they next showed a new project from Retro Studios: Donkey Kong Country Returns. It's (another) platformer, but with its own unique style and feel, and it's planned for the holiday season.

From there, Nintendo shifted its focus to the upcoming revision to their portable console, the 3DS. Since it's impossible to show the 3D effect on stage, they contented themselves with showing off software and features, but they also brought a massive amount of test consoles, so you can expect to see hands-on reports coming out in a day or two. The 3DS has a slightly larger screen on top — 3.5" instead of 3" — and the bottom screen is a touchscreen. There's an analog nub, an internal gyro-sensor, and a 3D slider, which will control the level of depth you see on screen. You can turn it to maximum, turn it off, or anywhere moderate level of depth in between. There are two camera lenses on the back, which will allow you to take photos in 3D. In addition to the 3D effect, they've also made more standard improvements to the graphics hardware, which has apparently impressed some of the developers working on games for the 3DS. They also briefly touched on the 3DS's communications capabilities. Apparently it will silently look for updates, new maps, ghost data, rankings, and more regardless of what game you're playing, communicating over Wi-Fi or through connections with other nearby consoles.

Headlining the software side of the 3DS was the announcement of Kid Icarus: Uprising, another return to a very popular franchise of old. Granted, it's tough to judge a game by its trailer, but the graphics looked extremely good for a portable system. Nintendo said that in addition to games, the 3DS would play 3D movies as well, though details are sparse as to what will be available and how. But their real concern was the perception that the system would have too few games to interest customers, so they went out of their way to list a bunch of developers and game projects that are targeting the new system. The list is really, really impressive: Kingdom Hearts, Resident Evil, Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid, DJ Hero, Saint's Row, Madden, FIFA Soccer, Nintendogs + Cats, Ridge Racer, Splinter Cell, Ghost Recon, Mario Kart, Star Fox, and more.

almehdaaol writes "New military recruits are coming in physically heavier and out of shape, so the US Navy has decided to take an interesting course of action by creating a new training regimen inspired by the fitness-centric Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution." This comes alongside a report confirming some of the BS we told our parents when we were growing up: "Bavelier said playing the kill-or-be-killed games can improve peripheral vision and the ability to see objects at dusk, and the games can even be used to treat amblyopia, or lazy eye, a disorder characterized by indistinct vision in one eye. She said she believes the games can improve math performance and other brain tasks."

CyDharttha writes with news that the Mac version of Steam went live today, along with Mac versions of Portal, Team Fortress 2, and many other games. Valve plans to make more games available every Wednesday. Several publications are also reporting that a Linux version of Steam has been confirmed, and is expected within the next few months. Quoting Phoronix: "Found already within the Steam store are Linux-native games like Unreal Tournament 2004, World of Goo, and titles from id Software such as Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and Doom 3. Now that the Source Engine is officially supported on Linux, some Source-based games will be coming over too. Will we finally see Unreal Tournament 3 surface on Linux too? Only time will tell, but it is something we speculated back in 2008. Postal III is also being released this year atop the Source Engine and it will be offering up a native client. We have confirmed that Valve's latest and popular titles like Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and Team Fortress 2 are among the first of the Steam Linux titles, similar to the Mac OS X support. The released Linux client should be available by the end of summer."

eldavojohn writes "Sure, they're stepping all over proprietary rights and copyright, but something must be said about the amount of bliss-filled nostalgia inside Exploding Rabbit's Super Mario Crossover. If the plumbers never really did it for you, you can now kill those goombas as Link, Mega Man, Samus, Simon Belmont, or Contra's Bill. Goodbye jumping and spitting; hello slicing, whipping, and shooting. Is this one of the early firsts in the new genre of video game mashups?"

Channard writes "As reported by Joystiq, the PS3/PlayStation Network version of Final Fight Double Impact features a rather restrictive piece of digital rights management. In order to launch the game, you have to be logged into the PlayStation Network and if you're not, the game refuses to launch. This could be written off as a bug of some kind except for the fact that the error message that crops up tells you to sign in, suggesting Sony/Capcom intentionally included this 'feature.' Granted, you do have to log into the PlayStation Network to buy the title but as one commentator pointed out, logging in once does not mean you'll be logged in all the time. Curiously, the 360 version has no such restrictions, so you can play the game whether you're online or offline. But annoying as this feature may be, there may be method in Sony's madness. " Channard continues, "The key difference between buying titles on the 360's Marketplace and Sony's PlayStation Store is that buying a title from the Marketplace only usually entitles you to play that title on a single console. A PlayStation Network account, on the other hand, can be used to license up to five consoles, meaning any title purchased from that account can be played on five different consoles. And these consoles can be de-authorized and re-authorized at will, allowing gamers to switch licenses around. This has led to a practice known as PSN game sharing, whereby gamers can purchase a title together, thereby paying a fifth of the cost of the game, and still allowing anyone to play the game on their console. Whether this has had any direct impact upon Sony or Capcom's apparent decision to implement this forced sign-in system is unknown. [Though an email from a Capcom employee seems to confirm this.] But Final Fight is the first title to feature this system — it'd be interesting to know whether this was done at Sony or Capcom's request."

Vamman writes with a followup to news from 2009 that MekTek.net was going to release MechWarrior 4 for free after obtaining permission from Smith & Tinker, who licensed the MechWarrior rights from Microsoft. Now, almost a year later, the free release has yet to see the light of day, in large part due to Microsoft. Quoting: "... the Free Release is held up at Microsoft and it is unknown to us and our studio when the Free Release will be given the final go ahead. Due to the demands placed upon us by industry lawyers to release the Mechwarrior4 Free release we were forced to insure our studio at a premium rate to meet the Microsoft standard. Our insurance policy is a one year lease and we are unable to tap out of this policy until next fall. In addition to our insurance costs we are also struggling with our server costs. Currently, our server fund has run dry and staff and beta members are paying out of their pockets to help keep MekTek online. At this point we don't know from month to month if we will be able to stay online." Vamman adds, "MekTek has released a major update for their existing community, expansion MekPak 3.1. They are also promising their new expansion, MekPak 4, in a few weeks as open beta!"

Internal Microsoft documents obtained by Joystiq indicate that its Xbox 360 console will gain support for USB storage devices some time this Spring. "According to the document, the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. 'The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller.' Upon inserting a blank USB storage device, 'consumers are offered two choices: "Configure now" or "Customize."' The 'Configure now' option will use 'the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB,' meaning, regardless of the overall size of the device you're using, the Xbox will only enable 16 GB of usable, non-system storage. The 'Customize' option will allow you to 'preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device' such as music." There have also been rumors of a new, smaller form factor for the 360, and hacker Ben Heck has given his thoughts on some leaked motherboard pictures.

Internal Microsoft documents obtained by Joystiq indicate that its Xbox 360 console will gain support for USB storage devices some time this Spring. "According to the document, the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. 'The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller.' Upon inserting a blank USB storage device, 'consumers are offered two choices: "Configure now" or "Customize."' The 'Configure now' option will use 'the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB,' meaning, regardless of the overall size of the device you're using, the Xbox will only enable 16 GB of usable, non-system storage. The 'Customize' option will allow you to 'preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device' such as music." There have also been rumors of a new, smaller form factor for the 360, and hacker Ben Heck has given his thoughts on some leaked motherboard pictures.

Internal Microsoft documents obtained by Joystiq indicate that its Xbox 360 console will gain support for USB storage devices some time this Spring. "According to the document, the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. 'The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller.' Upon inserting a blank USB storage device, 'consumers are offered two choices: "Configure now" or "Customize."' The 'Configure now' option will use 'the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB,' meaning, regardless of the overall size of the device you're using, the Xbox will only enable 16 GB of usable, non-system storage. The 'Customize' option will allow you to 'preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device' such as music." There have also been rumors of a new, smaller form factor for the 360, and hacker Ben Heck has given his thoughts on some leaked motherboard pictures.

ZuchinniOne writes "With Ubisoft's fantastically awful new DRM you must be online and logged in to their servers to play the games you buy. Not only was this DRM broken the very first day it was released, but now their authentication servers have failed so absolutely that no-one who legally bought their games can play them. 'At around 8am GMT, people began to complain in the Assassin's Creed 2 forum that they couldn't access the Ubisoft servers and were unable to play their games.' One can only hope that this utter failure will help to stem the tide of bad DRM."